Research agenda for studying European Ecosystems.

The purpose of the proposed activity is the perceived need for a new approach to the study of European ecosystems in a manner that will allow both existing and new information to be integrated across several scales: from the micro tothe global, across major north-south and east-west transects, from local to supra-national political units and from the purely academic and scientific approach to a problem-oriented, holistic view which incorporates the essential dynamic between antropogenic impacts, plannes human intervention and ecosystem structure and function in a way that takes both EU oplicy and international policy into account. The objective id the activity is to integrate a large body of information into a cohesive set of recommendations which could be useful for developing in the Fifth Framework Research Programme of the EU.